9 minute read
People Who Pie
These New Hampshire pie companies serve up flavor and fun
BY KARA MCGRATH
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: pie season. Whether you’re seeking one of the classics — perhaps pumpkin, pecan or pot pie — or something a bit more nouveau, these three New Hampshire pie shops will happily serve you a slice.
Slightly Crooked Pies • Bedford
Lauren Collins Cline baked her first pie at 23, when she hosted her first Thanksgiving. “I really wanted to bake a pie from scratch,” Cline says. “I looked up a recipe on Williams Sonoma, and I used a store (bought) crust because baby steps.” The apple pie she produced was a hit, and the gratification of the experience motivated her to keep making more.
She started posting the pies on Facebook and, eventually, friends asked if they could buy them. When the pandemic hit in 2020, people who were skipping their usual Thanksgiving travel reached out in search of the homemade pies they’d otherwise be missing out on. The ramped-up demand offered an outlet for Cline, who was a hospital communications director at the time. “I really needed an outlet to just get my mind off of work and everything that was happening in the outside world,” she recalls.
Slightly Crooked Pies became official in January 2021. As a homestead business, Cline is licensed to operate out of her home kitchen in Bedford, which is where the name comes from. Her house was built in the 1740s, about 10 years before Bedford was officially incorporated as a town. “The foundation for (the kitchen) is rudimentary, and there isn’t a level floor anywhere,” Cline says. “No matter how much I’ve tried to adjust the feet on the oven, I still get crooked pies.”
Cline’s creations are primarily fruit- or nut-based, encased by a flaky pastry crust that uses both butter and shortening. Slightly Crooked Pies offers yummy twists on classic flavors — think maple apple, blueberry lavender and chocolate bourbon pecan — including seasonal options that aren’t always in line with the weather outdoors. “Sometimes I’ll do a Tropical Tango pie in January,” she says. “I just need it to feel like summer.” Although she’s in the sweet pie business, Cline says she doesn’t love excessively sweet things. “The first thing I do when I develop or adapt a recipe is reduce the sugar to the lowest possible amount while maintaining the flavor,” she explains.
“I get inspiration (for pie flavors) at the strangest times,” she says. “And those have turned out to be some of my most popular ones. I’ve won awards with those.” One such example is her popular Sweater Weather pie, which has an apple and pear filling that’s seasoned with cardamom. “It’s got this warm, almost outdoorsy feeling about it,” Cline says. “I braid the top to look like a cable-knit sweater.”
While Cline has dreams of opening up a brick-and-mortar store, (“If I were to win the Mega Millions!”) for now, she’s just happy her pies can bring up fond memories for her customers. “Everyone has got a story (about pie),” she says. “You don’t find that with other types of sweets.” slightlycrookedpies.com
The Pot Pie Bar • Bedford
If you’re looking for a quick and easy weeknight meal, The Pot Pie Bar is here to help. Caroline Arend’s savory pies go straight from frozen to dinner: Since they come in oven-safe packaging, you just take off the lid, pop it on a sheet pan, and put it in the oven for about a half an hour.
The Pot Pie Bar is the sister company to Arend’s other business, Caroline’s Fine Foods, a full-service catering company that also sells prepared meals to go and lunchtime fare like paninis.
During COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, Arend’s loyal customer base began purchasing meals for first responders in order to support the business and the people on the frontlines of the pandemic. “We found ourselves making crazy amounts of family-style pot pies,” Arend says.
After some recipe development and testing, the team decided to turn the pot pies into a full-on business.
Arend studied business at Boston University, but ultimately decided she didn’t want to get a master’s degree. “I couldn’t take one more accounting class, to be quite honest with you,” she says. “It was awful.” Instead, having worked in the restaurant industry throughout college, she decided to give culinary school a whirl. She worked at a few restaurants in Boston before opening her own catering company to have a little more control over her schedule.
The formal culinary training was a nice way into the industry but, as Arend puts it, “They didn’t teach me how to make pot pie at the Culinary Institute.” She’s self-taught in that regard.
Arend and her team started with the classic chicken pot pie but have since expanded to indulgent offerings like braised short rib, chicken cordon bleu, lobster, and cheeseburger mac ‘n’ cheese pies. “We just started to think of comfort food that would translate well into pot pies,” she says.
Soon, the company will be moving into a larger space: Arend just purchased a restaurant where she hopes to build up a USDA-certified kitchen so they can wholesale the pies.
While technically in a whole new town (Goffstown), loyal customers will be happy to hear the new space is only 10 minutes away from the current location.
“We’ll have a new clientele in addition to our old clientele,” Arend says. “We’re excited for our future home.” thepotpiebar.com
Woodstock Pie and Coffee • North Woodstock
Josiah Lundin had only been working for Woodstock Pie and Coffee for a few months when the previous owners decided they were ready to retire. Owning a coffee shop had been a goal of Lundin’s since college, so he and his father jumped on the opportunity to buy the business. Lundin kept the old business model — good pie, good coffee — the same, but transitioned the shop to be primarily vegan.
Lundin, 26, has been vegan for seven years, so making the few easy tweaks necessary (like omitting the egg wash that was brushed on top for oat milk) to ensure all the fruit pies are vegan by default was important for him.
Luckily, he didn’t have to change the rest of the pie crust: It was already an all-vegetable shortening recipe. “Their crust recipe was very similar to my grandmother’s pie crust recipe,” Lundin says.
Woodstock Pie and Coffee’s focus is on fruit pies; the classics like apple and blueberry are best sellers year-round. They also do some nut pies, quiches and savory pot pies, particularly in the colder seasons. (Lundin hasn’t figured out a good vegan quiche recipe quite yet, but he’s working on it.)
They also sell non-pie pastries that primarily fall under the charge of Danielle Silva, a baker Lundin met at a previous job about five years ago. Lundin estimates that about half of the pastries are vegan, including a vegan whoopie pie. “It’s not too hard to use egg substitutes to make the chocolate cakes nondairy and egg-free,” he explains.
While this is a story about pies, Lundin’s background is more aligned with the coffee part of the business. He worked in coffee shops all through college and, since the previous owners had the pie part pretty much on lock, he focused on expanding the caffeinated options on the menu. He added cold brew iced coffee and new espresso drinks to the menu, like the Maple Madness (a maple latte with a maple sugar garnish) and the Wichita Mocha (“pretty much a caramel mocha”).
It’s best to stop by the shop early to grab that morning coffee and slice of pie. The entire space is only 316 square feet, so Lundin says they sell out early due to the size restraints of the pie production area.
“I would like to eventually try to increase the size of my space in some way,” Lundin says when asked about the future of the business. “But I don’t want to lose the charm.” woodstockpieandcoffee.com
Live Free or Pie
You may not think of store-bought pie as comfort food, but Mrs. Budd’s is here to change your mind. With roots in New Hampshire (Manchester to be exact), this nationwide wide company is known for their chicken pies with a flaky crust that will melt in your mouth. Look for them at your local grocery store and find sizes that range from single-serve to family-style — each is sure to become a household staple and new favorite in your kitchen. mrsbudds.com
Mobile Pies
Looking for a quick pie to go? Northeast Pie Company in Durham has your taste buds and time covered. The team at this small pie truck is on the University of New Hampshire campus and offers up savory mini pies like chicken pot pie or buffalo chicken made from local ingredients. They also offer coffee, grab-and-go snacks and other breakfast treats as part of their rolling menu. Facebook
